Excalibur Technologies announced that it has signed an integration and OEM agreement with Progressive Technology Federal Systems, Inc. (PTFS). The agreement calls for PTFS to integrate Excalibur RetrievalWare, Excalibur’s high performance search and retrieval application, into PTFS’s AVATAR Digital Asset Management System (ADAMS). ADAMS is a Web based solution for archiving, managing, retrieving and disseminating 100% of an organization’s digital assets ranging from archived photographs, rare books, full text imaged and electronic documents, digital video/audio, and virtually any type of digital object. www.ptfs.com, www.excalib.com
Day: May 12, 1999
webMethods, Inc., announced at the Open Buying on the Internet (OBI) Consortium’s Quarterly Members Meeting that the company has joined the OBI Consortium, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing open standards for business-to-business e-commerce. webMethods will include support for OBI in the 3.0 release of webMethods B2B, which will be released mid-summer. As an OBI Consortium member, webMethods will collaborate with Intelisys to champion future OBI support for the XML. Together, webMethods and Intelisys will deliver the combined benefits of XML and OBI to buyers and suppliers that want to implement B2B e-commerce solutions and automate business procurement over the Internet. The OBI Consortium is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing open standards for business-to-business Internet commerce. Membership in the Consortium is open to buying and selling organizations, technology companies, financial institutions, and other interested parties on an annual fee basis. The Consortium provides a forum for standards development, education, and compliance certification. www.openbuy.org
Travel suppliers from the air, car and hotel industries with the support of the Air Transport Association (ATA) and The Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (HEDNA), announce the formation of the Open Travel Alliance (the Alliance). The Alliance is a travel industry group, assembled to create and promote new electronic commerce standards that improve the way information is exchanged between suppliers, distributors and consumers. This new initiative, led by air, car and hotel suppliers, has set as its initial goal the delivery of a directory of common industry data labels to be exchanged among the travel supplier, distributor, and customer reservations computer systems. The Alliance’s goal is to include participation from air, car, hotel and other travel suppliers, but also global distribution systems and travel agencies, as well as many other developers of travel-oriented products and services. Open communication standards between the industries, developed by the Alliance, will facilitate a cost-effective exchange of information and will ultimately reduce duplication of efforts and create new innovative distribution opportunities. One of the Alliance’s first steps in moving toward this goal is the creation of an “open” set of standard XML definitions to facilitate communication between users. This “thesaurus” of terms will allow users to choose how they communicate between systems. Companies currently participating in the Open Travel Alliance are: Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Midwest Express Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Trans World Airlines, United Airlines, Vanguard Airlines, Bass Hotels and Resorts, Hilton Hotels, Hyatt Corporation, Marriott International, Sterling Hotels, Swissotel, Alamo Rent A Car, Avis Rent A Car, Budget Rent-A-Car, Dollar Rent A Car Systems, Inc., Hertz Corporation, National Car Rental and Thrifty Car Rental. www.opentravel.com
